Red Stains on the Cotton Fields
by Miss Maia
Summary: Nothing could satisfy the Capitol. They got what they wanted and the people would just watch. One of the Colony decided to question this, to defy the army and say the unthinkable. He couldn't imagine his family would pay the price. Historical AU, based on the reality of Latin American colonies in the 19th century.


**Author's Note: **Written for Prompts in Panem, Day Two - Greed.

This is a Historical AU, situated in the reality of Latin American colonies in the 19th century. I won't specify the country because I believe it could have happened in any of those colonies, though it was inspired by Brazil. Also, this fic is based on the movie "Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury", from Luiz Bolognesi.

**Warning: **Violence, Child Abuse and Rape. Rated M; NC-17.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own the _Hunger Games_ trilogy; this is just an attempt at fun by playing with someone else's toys.

**Summary: **"Nothing could satisfy the Capitol. They got what they wanted and the people would just watch. One of the Colony decided to question this, to defy the army and say the unthinkable. He couldn't imagine his family would pay the price. Historical AU, based on the reality of Latin American colonies in the 19th century. '_There are no statues for my heroes; only for the ones who murdered them.'"_

* * *

**Red Stains on the Cotton Fields**

**Colony, October 1825**

**The Battle**

The sun would soon rise completely over the fields. During these wee hours of the morning, when the light was barely touching the plantation, I could see the white of the new cotton shining like crystal under the orange glow. It was beautiful.

The warm rays also reflected on my carbine and my sharp knife—both ready to kill at the slightest sign of the Capitol's soldiers. My wife was quiet at my side, refusing to wait in the refuge with the others families. She was an excellent shooter, but I still wondered if she would get out of this alive. Hundreds of us also watched the sun illuminating the endless white; hundreds of hearts beating fast and waiting for the blue uniforms that represented the Capitol.

My eyes kept darting to my wife's dark hair gleaming under the early sun, the breeze caressing her with the same softness it touched the cotton. It made my fingers tremble with the need to touch her as gently as the wind. She didn't deserve the fate most of us would have that day, nor did our children. However, she wasn't the only one that didn't deserve any of this.

That was why we were fighting: to give our families and future generations a way out of the grasps of the Capitol. Though the path we needed to cross was filled with blood and corpses, we were willing to pay the price.

I took a deep breath, the strong smell of gunpowder invading my nose.

I, Peeta Mellark, would probably die before the sun set again.

* * *

**Colony, June 1812**

**The Name**

I was the third generation of frustrated Mellarks. My grandfather had come to the Colony with the intention to thrive in richness, exploiting the land with the same greed his home country demonstrated; though he wasn't a very wise man, and ended up as poor as many others who didn't succeed. My father, born in the Colony, aimed for less than my grandfather did, and ended up accepting this new reality, and finding a peaceful life across the sea. I always thought he was right, and the tales about our home beyond the ocean seemed childish for me. My home was the land where I was born, the hot sun and fertile soil offering more than just fairytales.

Our lives consisted of baking and selling our products in the town fair, the biggest town for miles. I accompanied my father since a very young age, going to the market to learn the tricks of our business.

But the main reason I loved to go to the fair wasn't to learn how to sell bread.

It was for her.

Her face expressed what was so common in our colony: the olive skin and light eyes that screamed the mix of races. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, trolling behind her father in a beige skirt and long braid, selling their meat and clothes. The first time I saw her, I was obsessed with knowing her name. My family didn't need any of the products she was offering, but I insisted on buying something just to try to learn her name. I approached her chart with a loaf of bread, ready to trade with whatever she had.

Since I had waited most of the day to gather the courage to get close to her, she didn't have any meat left, and only had a delicate patterned cloth of cotton, most commonly used to sew women's clothing.

"I … I have fresh bread to trade for the cloth." I never hated myself so much for my young voice failing like that. She smiled shyly, one hand running down her braid.

"It's a good quality cloth. Your wife will appreciate it," she responded calmly, never meeting my eyes. I almost tripped in my rush to clarify the situation, stammering with words and digging my fingers into the loaf.

"No, no… I, I… I don't ... I mean, I'm not—" Her father appeared from behind her, sending me the most piercing scowl I had ever seen—though I'd get used to it in the near future.

"We don't need bread, Katniss. Let's go back before it's dark," he said firmly, a stark contrast with my unstable voice.

I watched her go with her shy smile still plastered on her face, the most discreet of the waves dancing on her fingers before she turned to follow her father.

I smiled to myself; her name was Katniss.

* * *

**Colony, March 1825**

**The Spark**

After knowing her name, everything unfolded easily. No one wanted to have unmarried daughters, not when the audacity of the authorities abused poor, single woman. When Katniss' father learned I wasn't what my skin could mean—another exploiting hand in this land—he accepted me as a son, welcoming me to his family. Through the years, I've learned that her father wasn't the only one in her family who could master a fierce scowl, but that was just another thing that I loved about my wife.

For a period of my life, I considered myself one of the happiest men in the word. I had married the woman I always desired and she graced me with two healthy children. The girl, the eldest, was already old enough to help me with my baking, waking up before the sun to prepare the early dough. My little boy was still too young to get near the ovens, but he sometimes accompanied his sister and me on our daily trips to the fair in town.

We lived in a small mud house, two hours away from the town when riding the cart. We paid our taxes for the Capitol and went on with our lives, mostly ignoring any political goings-on that boiled around us.

The problem started when they stopped ignoring us.

Our society was ruled by the slavocrats: miles and miles of cotton fields planted with the sweat of African slaves, who never had seen and never would see any of the gold they helped to gain. The Capitol sought to exploit the colony in everyway it could, its desire for money and power a bottomless hole that would lead us all to ruin. These few rich families commanded thousands of poor people, natives or not, through an iron handed government. When this authority and its men were just a few blue-suited fellows who used to buy my bread at the fair, I could live with that. But the moment they started demanding more than we could offer, they became a problem.

It was a hot Wednesday when the first man came to my house. He wasn't a soldier, and rather a shirtless mulatto asking for bread.

"There are twenty slaves living in a camp near this area. They escaped a few days ago from the farm. We need food," he begged from atop an emaciated horse.

I was shirtless under my cotton apron, my forehead sweated with the heat of the season and the fire from the ovens. "Katniss," I called for my wife, who was watching the scene from our wooden door. "Go get the fresh loaves."

"And what are we going to eat if you give it all to this man?" she responded in an icy tone she rarely used. I understood her anger and distrust; we barely had we needed to feed our family, though I was sure we were better than the runaway slaves were.

"Do as I say." My voice lacked the order of my words, since I never spoke to her like this. Katniss shouldn't confront me in front of strangers, but I knew I was going to hear about that later. I honestly thought she'd give the bread without much concern; she herself was a daughter of a runaway slave that married a poor woman form the Capitol. Her father had probably received help like what I was trying to offer to that group of slaves.

The man left with the steaming bread packed on the back of his horse.

My daughter watched him go from the window, and my son tried to run after the horse for a few yards.

"And what are we supposed to eat, now?" Katniss asked as we watched the dust raising in the air.

"I'll make more bread," I responded quietly, heading to the outdoor ovens that were the subsistence of my small family.

That was the first day slaves had asked for my help. I should have known that would have consequences.

* * *

**Colony, April to September 1825**

**The Fire**

The first time a Capitol representative, the Colonel, came to my house was to ask if I had seen any runaway slaves wandering around my property.

"We're after a group of fifty slaves," he said from atop his horse, his blond hair a tone of red under the dry dust. Five men followed him, all of them riding strong animals, their guns' barrel showing behind their shoulders. "We've already captured most of them, but a dozen or so are still missing."

"Haven't heard of anything," I responded firmly, standing between the man and my daughter, who was helping me to prepare the ingredients to make the dough for the next day.

"That's funny," The Colonel said, dismounting his sorrel. "Because we found loaves of bread with the slaves. And I was wondering how they managed to bake them, and kindly asked one of the slaves. I cut off both his ears, but he refused to tell me a name." The grin he shot me then made a shiver run down my spine, hitting my pride with a strong wave of regret. Katniss was cleaning the ovens, with her olive face smudged with dark coal stains. From a few feet away, I saw her eyebrow rise in despair as the Colonel took a step in my—and our daughter's—direction.

"As the Capitol's representative, I could have you killed right now, Mr...?"

"Mellark," I answered shortly. No matter the color of my skin and eyes, without the right surname, a white face didn't mean anything. I didn't have the right family name.

"Mellark," he repeated to himself calmly, undoing the front buttons of his blue coat. "If your family, Mr. Mellark, is ready to help slaves, why wouldn't it help the Capitol? We strive to give the colony the best services. The least we could ask back is your loyalty."

At each step he gave in my direction, my heart pounded in my chest. By then my hand was firmly around my daughter's arm, as if I could stop whatever was going to happen with my bare hands. Katniss made a movement to reach us, but when the blond head of our son appeared at the door, she rushed to keep him by her side.

The other men followed their leader, keeping their weapons close as they surrounded my family. My son started to whimper and Katniss juggled him on her hip, whispering something to keep him quiet. I saw the first tears tracing a clean path on her smeared face when the Colonel stopped right in front of me.

"We're a group of single men, Mr. Mellark. And, as men, we have necessities." The series of chuckles that emerged from his fellows made me grasp my daughter so strongly she started to tremble.

When his hand landed on her other arm, I attempted to fight back. The pistol was on my face less than a second later, the biggest of the Colonel's men pointing it right at me.

"Don't do anything stupid, unless you want to be killed in front of your family."

My son was crying loudly by then, but the laughs were suppressing him. Katniss hugged him closer, kneeling to the ground, unable to meet my gaze. What would she find in me? A coward?

A cold drop of sweat ran my temple as the Colonel pulled my daughter away from me, her gasp of surprise and fear inciting more jokes from the men. I couldn't look at her because if I tried to move, the gun right at my face would bathe my wife and son with my hot blood.

"Daddy, daddy …" she called while being dragged inside under the sound of loud whistles and rough laughs. "Help me, dad!"

Katniss' pleas joined hers, but the only voice I could hear was my daughter's. My eyes didn't leave the dull metal of the pistol while she screamed for me. Soon, her screams weren't for my help, but from pain and humiliation.

All I could remember form that afternoon was the cold metal shining in front of me as my daughter shouted for help, being raped in my own house.

What else could we offer? What else would satisfy this greed from the Capitol?

There were two different ways to act after what had happened. I could ignore the abuse and accept the fact that the Capitol could rape my daughter or wife whenever it wanted, requesting all my money in taxes and saying we were traitors if we didn't do any of those things.

I chose the other way.

"We attack during the night," I said for a crowd gathered near the fair. "They enter in our houses, rape our wives and daughters, steal from us and have the audacity to ask for loyalty. I'm tired of that. Who's with me?" I applied my talents at selling bread to selling ideas, but what moved the crowd weren't my words. It was their own rage against the injustice of their lives.

We attacked the Colonel's property in the first day of July. None of the poor, black and slaves fighting with us showed mercy, slaughtering the soldiers' bodies with a ferocity only someone who had been abused like us could muster.

I killed five men that night, and helped to torture and hang so many others I lost count—and we didn't stop there.

We, the rebels—a mix of escaped slaves, abused families and poor merchants—conquered the town after two exhausting months of daily battles. The night of our party, the victory party, I really thought we had quenched the undying desire from the Capitol to exploit us. I danced with my wife at the sound of our colony's music—a mixture of the European violin, the African drum and the native voices—illuminated by the full moon and the fires we made, finally happy we could find peace.

What we didn't know was that, while I watched my dear Katniss dancing with my children, the Capitol was gathering its army to destroy the rebels, because no one could stand between it and the richness of our soil and people.

Less than a month after our victory, we received a message that a new Colonel was marching to our town from the south, with a troop more than twice our numbers. And with the gold they stole from us, they could afford for better weapons, horses, swords and cannons.

Part of our concentration ran before the Colonel got to our town, afraid we were all going to be murdered.

"And where are we suppose to go," I said to Katniss when she suggested that we do the same. "We can't keep running, Katniss. They will find us and will kill us all, no matter where we are."

"So let me go with you. Let me fight."

What could I do if not let her follow me? I should know Katniss would follow me anywhere—even to certain death. I wouldn't face that arena alone.

"We'll meet their army before they reach the town," I said to other leaders, in the last attempt to save what we had conquered. "We'll meet them at the cotton fields, when they least expect. It's our only chance."

Katniss smiled at me then; I tried my best to engrave that smile in my mind to never forget it.

* * *

**Colony, October 1825**

**The Battle**

My eyes kept searching for Katniss' dark braid while the battle rose around us. I shot countless soldiers, but they never stopped coming, more and more. After the initial shock, their troop reorganized and fought back our efforts easily, with cannons and fire weapons while half of us struggled with machetes and sickles.

I lost count of how many lives I took that day, though I never lost sight of her. I watched as my wife slaughtered the men responsible for our misery, our poverty and—what really motivated her—our daughter's rape.

My girl never baked again; she could barely meet my eyes after what happened months ago, even after the fights and the new dreams.

In that moment, I was watching those dreams fade away with part of the rebel's army when the number of blue uniforms started to increase, the hours passing and our own numbers never enough.

I grabbed Katniss wrist, my hand covered in blood and my voice marked with fear. "Go back to the shelter and run to the woods. Go with the kids; don't ever look back!" It wasn't a request or something for her to consider—it was a straight order that, for the first time, Katniss obeyed without any further questions, running between corpses in the heart of battle, away from the Capitol's canon, the soldier's aim and away from me.

I saw her tangled hair disappearing into the woods when the sun starter to set, a gleam of light orange in the sky.

It was then that I felt the shot; at first cold, but then a hot stream of blood spurting from my shoulder. Around me, bodies of good people that only searched for justice gathered in an endless pile. I saw brave men falling next to me, slaughtered by swords their own hands helped to buy. There would be a stainless bronze statue in town for the Colonel commanding this battle, a statue raised next to the gallows that would hang my fellow survivors. To official history, he would be a hero, and we would be shameless rebels.

I knew everything was lost when my legs gave away, kneeling on the soft soil covered with cotton. Katniss could run, but she wouldn't get far; not when thousands of soldiers from the Capitol were searching for survivors. She and our children would end up as slaves working in the cotton fields. _"Someone born free can't survive slavery_", the saying echoed in my mind, and unfortunately it was true. Katniss, my son and my daughter would never survive a life working in the fields.

Time decelerated when my head hit the pillowed, dirty ground. Shadows of dying men blurred the orange rays, and the sounds of guns seemed far away.

The smell of gunpowder made my mouth water, but when I spit, it was only blood—warm blood that landed on a surprisingly intact cotton plant.

A delicate red stain on the pure white.

It was as beautiful as Katniss' smile.

* * *

_"There are no statues for my heroes; only for the ones who murdered them."_

_- Luiz Bolognesi_

* * *

**Author's Note: **Revolts hatched throughout the colonies in the 19th century, and by the end of the that century, most of these colonies were independent countries.

I believe stories like that inspired Collins to write her own tale, when the rebels fight against the greedy Panem's Capitol. In my opinion, this political message is the most important subject in the books. I'm an Everlak fan, but what really touched me reading _The Hunger Games _trilogy was the incredible way Suzanne worked with the political aspects of a country under a dictatorship, and how the rebels fought for liberty and justice.

I'm sagacious-owl on tumblr ;D

Special thanks to the betareader: **honeylime. **


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